Stalin - Foreign Policy (quick essay notes)

Foreign Policy

Historical context

1. Stalin’s coming to power saw the shift away from a policy of “permanent revolution” and towards “socialism in one country.”
2. International revolution under Lenin did not work in practice –when the Red Army was used to invade Poland in 1920 to initiate the rise of a worker’s movement, they were quickly resisted and run out.
3. “Socialism in one country” sought to secure the USSR so that a socialist society could be developed within. This required that the threat of foreign invasion be addressed.
4. Soviet conduct in foreign policy until 1941 conducted to fulfill the sole purpose of protecting the soviet border from realignment.

Early Foreign Policy

1. The USSR and Germans signed the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922.
1. The two nations were forced into alliance because they had no other choice –Germany was an outcast after its loss in WWI, and Russia was an outcast because the Allied nations still resented their early withdrawal from WWI in 1917. Their “outcast” status facilitated this alliance.
2. Stalin was against supporting Mao Zedong’s Communists during the Chinese Revolution in 1927.
1. Stalin reasoned that Mao’s Communists were too few and too insignificant, and therefore not worthwhile supporting. Not supporting Mao in the Chinese Revolution would be in the best interest of consolidating the Soviet state, according to Stalin.
2. Stalin’s actions lead to a permanent distrust of the Soviets within Mao.
3. Pilsudski, the war hero who lead the Poles to victory against the Russian attack of 1920, came to power in 1927. He was a fervent anti-communist.
1. Pilsudski’s presence was a direct threat to the USSR. A hostile Poland was a strategic danger to the Soviets because in the case of a Western invasion against the USSR, Poland could be used as an effective launching pad for the attack.

Direct actions by Stalin

4. Stalin’s suspicion towards Germany mounted with the Locarno Treaty in 1925 and Germany’s admittance to the League of Nations. He retaliated by issuing the arrest of German officials in the USSR.
1. Records of persecution of both Soviet nationals and foreign residents deepened the suspicion towards the USSR by other nations.
5. The Great Depression after 1929 repelled Stalin from actively pursuing improved relations with other nations.
1. The isolationism of the USSR’s soviet economy kept them safe from the depression. The was seen as a victory of socialism over capitalism.
6. In Germany, Stalin’s instructions told the Germany Communist Party (KGP) to stop any alliance with the Social Democrats and instead ally with the Nationalist Socialists.
1. This showed Stalin’s misunderstanding of the title of “Nationalist Socialists”. He did not realize that the strength and appeal of Nazism came from its nationalism, which was fundamentally opposed to international communism.
2. Since the KGP and the Social Democrats did not ally, the last attempt at creating a barrier against Nazi power in Germany was lost.
7. The USSR was admitted into the League of Nations in 1934; an agreement of “mutual assistance” was reached in 1935 between France, the USSR and Czechoslovakia; preliminary diplomatic contact occurred between the US and the USSR in 1935.
1. Stalin’s pursuit of defence agreements with capitalist powers confused and alienated many soviet sympathizers.
8. In 1935, the Comintern again repealed for all progressive parties to oppose fascism.
1. The policy was too late and progressive parties in other nations were now reluctant to respond to what they understood to be USSR’s expediency to oppose German aggression.
9. Historiography: Lynch, “The plain fact was that Soviet Russia could not be trusted”. Stalin and Khrushchev: USSR 1924-64. Purges, alienate other countries.
10. In the Spanish Civil War, Stalin’s actions to send military aid actually worked to slow down the leftist Republicans.
1. Stalin was anxious not to see a victory for Marxism in Spain. He feared that if Communist appeared in South-West Europe, other Western nations might be frightened into forming an anti-Soviet pact.
11. Stalin did not accept the ideas in Mein Kempf that Hitler always intended to invade the USSR.
1. The German need to expand eastward at the expense of Russia and the Slavic lands were one of the main features of Nazism. Stalin paid no heed to this and followed through with the Nazi-Soviet pact either way.
12. Germany attacked the USSR on June 22 1931.
1. The Pact gave Germany a free hand in the war and made invasion of Russia come sooner rather than later. This is because following the Pact, Germany was free to initiate conflict between the Western nations. The fall of France came faster because Germany did not have to fight at two fronts simultaneously.
2. Stalin’s reluctance to admit the reality of the situation in June 1941 made it impossible for men under his position to do so as well.
13. Stalin responded to intelligence by Richard Sorge on June 15 1941 that “this is German disinformation”.
1. Despite mounting evidence of a German invasion of the USSR, Stalin was reluctant to accept it.

International Events

14. Hitler came to power in 1933. He initiated an aggressive anti-communist propaganda campaign upon coming to power.
1. Fascism and communism were ideologically incompatible and Hitler was a strong anti-communist as a result. The spirit of Locarno was lost and Germany became the main threat to the USSR.
15. The failure of collective security was apparent in Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935.
1. Britain and France did not respond by condemning Mussolini, instead they tried to find ways to prevent it from developing into an international crisis.
2. Though collective security was an impressive principal, it was clear that Britain and France had no intention to risk war for this principle. This rendered it impossible in practice.
16.  The fascist, Germany, Japan and Italy, came together to form the Anti-Cominturn Pact in November 1936.
1. The pact negated all efforts by the USSR since 1933 to establish security.
2. It posed the threat of a two-front war.
17. The Munich agreement was signed in 1938, which gave Hitler the Sudetenland and granted all his major demands.
1. This policy of “appeasement” was interpreted instead by Stalin as a Western conspiracy to give Germany a free hand in attacking the diplomatically-isolated USSR.
18. Soviet Foreign Ministers, Litvinov and Molotov, delivered series of formal alliance proposals to Britain and France. They were left unanswered.
1. France and Britain simply could not trust the USSR.
19. The Soviet-Nazi Pact was signed in 1939.
1. Given the real threat of Germany and the reluctance of Paris and London to ally with the USSR, Stalin was forced to nullify the danger of Germany by directly reaching an agreement with Hitler.

Shortcomings of the Red Army

1. Out of 101 supreme military officers, 90 were arrested and 81 were killed.
2. By 1938, one fourth of Stalin’s army was purged.
3. Stalin did not respond to Operation Barbarossa for a week.
4. Because the tendency to desert was so significant within the Red Army, Order 227 was issued and demanded that “not one step back” be taken in the Soviet ranks.

Robert Conquest ,  Stalin “represented a continuity …with the old party of the underground” The Great Terror: Reassessed (1991)

Michael Lynch. “The plain fact was that Soviet Russia could not be trusted”

David Williamson, the USSR was “trapped into a war without the allies”